A Kidnapping at Six
by AnimeSiren
Summary: A nervous copper waits outside Vauxhall Cross to kidnap the Quartermaster.


Quince Holmes had been a slightly nervous, unconfident, and largely anti-social person. He didn't accomplish much in his life and drifted away from family and home like a fog when he was just sixteen. He had no promising school record yet was arrested for a very specific set of crimes several days before his twentieth birthday and called a criminal genius.

Shortly thereafter Quince Holmes disappears. Whether into the Thames or into the ether it's not known. The trail ends there and according to every scrap of public record the young man's life ceases to exist at that point.

Q, however, is a young man who's life begins at just the same point. He's allowed his passion, algorithms and the unhackable become child's play. Q rises through the ranks of MI6's Quartermasters. Q becomes confident, Q becomes needed, and Q becomes an irrevocable part of the country's vitality.

With age Q also gains the feeling that nothing existed before his fingers set themselves upon officially sanctioned keyboards. He didn't know the outside world before he knew the firewalls of the security services and all their secrets.

Q tried to be only Q, and never anything else, despite his eldest brother's interference.

X-_X-_X

Greg fidgets, twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. The cigarette belongs to the pack he's taken to keeping in his jacket, though he hasn't smoked one in most of a year. He keeps them there as a reminder. He could have one if he wanted to, but he was making a choice. Confidence in his choices was something he had learned to rely on quite a bit in the past year.

He's supposed to be keeping his eyes on the corner of the street. But he can't. It's not that he wouldn't love to follow the orders he had been given and then go home; it's just that waiting out front of MI6's newly restored headquarters at Vauxhall Cross is more than slightly intimidating.

He's a little concerned that he'll suddenly find an assault rifle in his face and a terrorism charge. Greg suspects that whatever they throw at him would trump his warrant card.

He stores the cigarette back in its packet and forces his face upright. Just in the nick of time as well. The man just turning the corner matches the picture he had been given perfectly.

With a bit of a stumble Greg hurries himself off and down the street. He sends up a quick hope that if he mucks it all up that his friend with a "small government position" might be able to sort it.

He steps around a couple of school kids and their scooters and manages to grab his target's elbow just before he steps into an Indian take away shop.

"Excuse me," Greg begins and then stops. He doesn't really have anything to follow the sentiment up with.

The man he had grabbed looks back at him boredly, and if he isn't wearing an expression that Greg is overly familiar with then he'd eat his boots.

Greg coughs. "My name is Detective Inspector Lestrade; I have some business with you."

The man still doesn't say anything. His gaze sweeps from ground to head level, taking in all the details. Then the brunette licks his lips, and _grins_ at Greg.

"You're not going to make this easy are you?" Lestrade lets go of the man's elbow and hazards a glimpse at the couple of pedestrians blatantly watching them. Turning back to the man, the smug grin still hasn't budged. Greg's orders were clear "Attract as little attention as possible please."

Steeling himself, Lestrade throws himself forward and sends his orders crashing out of frame.

He has one of the man's hands behind his back and cuffed in the time it takes the brunet to exclaim indignantly, but Lestrade has to wrestle a bit to secure the second. Quickly, Lestrade starts urging their way back down the street from where he came.

"Are you an imbecile?" the other man demands "Are you actually touched?"

"Just following a toff bastard's orders," Greg returns, "again."

"And does it fall within your responsibility to the law?" his cuffed companion demands sarcastically.

"When the person giving you an order is the person you're seeing privately the law becomes a bit of a grey area, best forgotten when you face sitting through yet another awkward dinner."

"This is utterly ludicrous. A dirty copper to top off a horrible week. I can't wait to see what next week has in store for me. Maybe Monday morning will find the Chinese using their Tianhe-2 supercomputer against GCHQ, I'm sure I'll have time for a spot of tea afterwards however who knows, by that point maybe _North Korea will have secured nuclear weapons!"_

Greg starts sweating. He has a feeling putting his detainee in the car is going to be a less than easy task and the people around them are looking at their phones far too contemplatively. "I'd have preferred to just bring home flowers and chocolates," he mutters to himself.

X-_X-_X

Mycroft hates drinking red wine. He'll pretend in front of company, even banter wittily with the posh upper crust about this merlot or that shiraz. He presents heads of state with two hundred year old bottles of it, and defends North American production of the drink over the French solely on principle.

He uncorks a bottle of it now and sets it to breathe. His brother, unlike he, has always enjoyed a red.

"There was no need for you to summon me, Mycroft."

"Evidently there was."

"You could have nothing to say that interests me. Keep Sherlock on a leash, but with me you'll grant me freedom."

"When you left," Mycroft begins, "I believed it to be a sentimental response to our father's passing. I had hardly imagined that it would be more than a decade before I would speak to you again."

"Sherlock seemed to keep your hands full, brother. I don't see how you would require need of me as well."

"Sherlock died."

Mycroft listens for an intake of breath, or any outward response. However he is disappointed in all that he hears behind him is silence. He picks up the glasses by their delicate stems and returns to the table where his brother is sat. Q looks at him with nothing but blank distrust.

"You will not mourn him?"

Q blinks, once. "He died several times at hospital my last night chained to the Holmes family, if my memory serves correct."

"From overdose." Mycroft states. He contemplates the color of the wine. He decides he would prefer a Sauvignon Blanc always.

"I will ask you once, Mycroft. What am I doing here? There will be no tears from me, or sentiment. I am far too like you in that regard. I will admit to giving into frustration or envy, perhaps like Sherlock, however I have nothing to show you. The Holmes family is in the wind, and that's where it belongs."

Mycroft closes his eyes heavily, and sets his glass on the side table. "Where is Gregory?"

"If you mean the detective, then he's probably still hurriedly smoking through a pack of cigarettes in the front Garden."

Mycroft opens an eye. "Did you have that much of an impact on him?"

Q slowly lifts his shirt sleeve and shows his watch to Mycroft. "It might have something to do with my telling him I had sent a distress signal to MI6 via the transmitter within my wristwatch."

"I don't favor the new director," Mycroft murmurs. "He takes lemon in his tea. The former M was much more sensible. She'd bring brandy."

Q scoffs. "He funnels money into my department as if the treasury were a sieve."

"Our time is short then."

Q nods.

"So be it," Mycroft says, and braces himself for war once more.

X-_X-_X

James walks into Q Branch with an amused smile. If ever catastrophe had happened in the world it was certainly showing itself within the room. There were a dozen maps and communications links opened on the large screens that walled the room and near everyone that James could see was moving far quicker than necessary.

"Have we been blown up again?" James wondered aloud, "Only I didn't hear anything go 'bang.'"

"It appears the Quartermaster has been taken."

James turns and greets M with a sardonic smirk. "Taken?"

M steps forward further into the room and the space naturally adjusts. The people within it changing their movements so that everything is centered around M like an orbit. "CCTV shows him across the street being shepherded into a metropolitan police vehicle before being taken north and across Lambeth bridge."

"He was arrested?" James is pleased. "Are his library books overdue?"

"Try to temper your personality," M replied dryly. "This could be a plot within our own government. I don't need to tell you that we can't handle much more destruction within our own ranks this year."

"What will you do then?" James turns, smoothing his lapels.

"You'll follow his distress signal," M says, "and you will find him."

"Oh good, and I thought I wouldn't be doing anything tedious today."

X-_X-_X

"You realize I knew when you joined six?"

"Or you found out later and are now pretending."

"No," Mycroft rises, straightening his waistcoat. "I knew back then, and I kept my distance. I was proud though, seeing you begin to care about something for once. Throwing off the lethargy that had clotted your life like tar."

"I know you patronize everyone this way, so I'll attempt not to feel special."

"You are special, because you are my family. You and Sherlock, I have done many things in my life to keep you both safe."

Q leans forward to cut deep "It didn't work quite so well with Sherlock did it?"

"No," My croft allows, "But his own ingenuity is the reason he lives."

Q does take in a breath then, but his eyes harden immediately. "You said he was dead, the papers say he is dead."

Mycroft nods, glad then that Q had at least paid attention to the headlines. "He wants the world, and me, to think otherwise however he does still live."

"Do you have him squirreled away in some bunker then?"

Mycroft shakes his head "I'll not interfere."

Q snorts. "For once."

Mycroft circles the room in long strides; it looks as though his vision sees something that isn't quite there. "Quince, you fought for your country earlier this year, and you fought very hard."

"Don't call me that."

"Why? You were named for Shakespeare, as Sherlock was named for the family, and myself for our English heritage."

"My name is Q, and I've worked hard to earn it."

"Why did you fight so hard for six? For an agent in trouble, and for the continuation of the security services?"

"It's my job," Q rises. He's angry.

"But I want to know _why_."

"I think it's time I leave, Mycroft."

"I think you fought for them because you care about them. I think they gave you your freedom and in return you are indebted to them. I think you love your country, and your job."

"What should any reason matter?" Q takes his glass and upends it in a very calm demonstration. "Do your Victorian carpets matter Mycroft? Does our family name? Does anything matter?" 

"Family," Mycroft says heavily. "Family matters, Quince. You matter, Sherlock matters, and keeping you safe matters to me."

"Sod family."

"No," Mycroft says, and his voice rises just then. "You have a duty to us as well; you have a duty to the mother that gave you your life."

"Look at all your sentiments, Mycroft. How displeased father would be."

"He wouldn't," Mycroft says, approaching Q quickly. "He told me to care for you and to care for Sherlock. That is what he cared about. He knew I would do my duty."

"He turned a blind eye to Sherlock's drugs and forgot I existed yet he cared for us you say?"

"Please," Mycroft asks, "Sherlock needs you now. He'll be returning soon and I need you to fight for him like you fought for six. It's going to be a difficult battle to remind him that choosing life was choosing right."

Q turns his back on Mycroft, and stands slightly bowed, his fists clenched at his side. "I thought I was free of this ridiculous family."

"I'm asking you to come back. I'm asking you to remember your Holmes name."

"The Holmes name means nothing."

"The Holmes name means _everything_."

Q snarls. "Why do you choose now to do this to me?"

"Because," Mycroft says softly "We need you."

X-_X-_X

The gate opens easily for James, a worrying fact but not one to put him off. He moves easily into the courtyard that's just hidden from sight by stone and brick. There's a man leaning against a police vehicle, and it makes James grin. He moves quickly up and behind the man.

"Officer I have a crime to report."

The man about jumps out of his skin, but he whirls around to throw a punch quickly enough. "Who the hell are you?" 

"MI6, come to collect our technical genius."

The man groans a bit. "I swear to Christ I really just wanted to be a normal copper arresting normal thugs and never, ever hearing the name _Holmes_."

James raises a brow. "Should I let you go then? Are you another innocent simply black mailed into breaking the law? Perhaps you have an ill mother in hospital? Or a wife took hostage?"

"Nope," the copper grunts, he and James still hand to hand, grappling for control, "just a bloody posh git interfering as usual."

"He's right I'm afraid, 007."

James feints to the right and then throws the cop off him, shoving his to the right and then over the bonnet of the man's car.

"Q, you look hardly tortured, should I come back later?"

"You're hilarious, as usual, Bond. No, it's time for us to go."

"Already? But I've hardly had any fun."

Q turns to the man who's struggling to life himself from the heap that James had thrown him into. "You'll want to attend to my brother now, I'm afraid. He's eyeing the Famous Grouse with intent."

The cop sort of nods and just eyes the two men. He looks rather exasperated if James says so himself.

Bond leads Q back out of the courtyard and they hail a cab. Once inside and on their way back towards the Thames James speaks. "What was all that about?"

"Family troubles. Quite droll; they want my help."

"And are you going to help them?"

Q hums, and looks out across the water and at the Eye. "We've only had two major security threats and a potential genocide this week, so I might as well. It's been slow lately if you think about it."

"Quartermasters," James laughs.


End file.
